Category: life

Neighborhood Slow-Cooked Apple Butter

apples
Ugly apples make the best apple butter. #Trust

Growing up, we had an enchanted orchard on our property.

I grew up on the side of a mountain in western Maryland, about an hour from both Baltimore and DC. Our driveway was an old stagecoach route, and the core of our home – the kitchen, the room above the kitchen (mine, eventually), and the dirt-and-stone basement – was 100 years old when I was little.

My childhood being what it was, I spent a lot of time alone, and some of that outside, wandering around the 11 acres of our (mostly) wooded property with a dog, a lot of ticks, and many copperhead snakes. We had a creek that ran through the property, minor rocky caves, and the above-mentioned orchard.

The orchard wasn’t much to look at. With just two each of neglected apple and pear trees, the harvest was uneven and unpretty. In the way of children, I don’t remember any pruning or care taken for that orchard, and I don’t remember any formal apple picking from that orchard. The apples and pears started out small and gnarly and grew more so as I got older, but if I had to guess at a memory I would say they were probably delicious in the way that only non-hybrid, heirloom, planted 30-years-before dwarf apple and pears can be. I took them for granted, I am sure, but I do remember pies, apple butter, and baked apples – the core hollowed out and stuffed full of nuts, raisins, cinnamon, and brown sugar and baked until the apples softened and combined with the sugar to release a syrupy ambrosia.

I remember dappled light streaming through the overgrown branches, the dampness of moss, and a constant hypervigilant awareness of the possibility of snakes. There was a moss-covered rock I spent time on, dreaming and staring out through the golden green undergrowth into the deepness of the rest of the woods.

Fast forward thirty years to five acres in Marietta in 2010 and a modestly larger group of five apple trees (plus six blueberry bushes and a peach tree that was mostly dead and only ever produced one rock-hard but perfectly delicious peach in our time there). Same unkempt branches. Same unlovely apples, but in abundance this time, weighing the branches so that in the fall I thought perhaps the pruning might take care of itself. These were Macintosh apples, I guessed, and covered with black spots that the interwebs assured me would not hurt me but just weren’t pretty to look at.

The squirrels sure loved the apples. They would sit high in the tree and take one bite, hurling them to the ground, often just as we walked by. If they had better aim things might be different, but as it stood then our orchard was littered through the late summer and early fall with half-eaten and partially rotted apples, bees, and the sickly sweet smell of decay.

Even with the squirrels doing their wasteful best, the apples the first year we moved to that house were abundant. I sent my horse’s hoof trimmer home with bags, and anyone else who wanted some, from the neighbor to the mailman to the UPS driver. And still there were too many.

In our urban environment now, there is no easy abundance of fruit – unless you look for it. Just one alley over there is a peach tree loaded with small, hard, but soon-to-be-delicious peaches. Two blocks away is an apple tree, pruned back hard last fall in anticipation of a house sale but coming back gangbusters with big apples. A sad little peach tree shares that yard as well, and an overloaded crabapple tree is just down the block in a pocket park off an alley.

Last week I nearly missed the apple tree down the block. I meant to go on Sunday morning but couldn’t quite drag myself out of bed, and when I passed it walking home from teaching yoga on Wednesday, nearly all the apples within sidewalk reach were gone. I don’t know what kind of apples these are – their texture is spongy and the flavor is tart apple essence rather than a big, bounding punch in the taste buds. But they might as well be my favorite kind – they have the terroir of Hampden, Baltimore. This could be a positive or negative, depending on your perspective, but for me, in many ways this tree brings me back to that enchanted orchard and makes me feel more connected to this city that I am still trying to love in spite of its trash and corruption and inequality. I can come to this tree in all of its stages – barren limbs, shy little buds, bursting flower, heavy with apples, gently drooping with the coming cold – and it brings me a similar peace that I felt in the glade on the side of the mountain in western Maryland.

This recipe is an easy solution to a beautiful abundance of fruit – apples, peaches, or pears. It couldn’t be easier, and you don’t need a stupid Instant Pot to do it. Allowing it to slow-cook overnight (or during the day while you’re at work) deepens the flavors, caramelizes the sugar, and produces a nuanced fruit butter unlike anything I have ever tasted.

Share it with your neighbors.

Neighborhood Slow-Cooked Apple Butter

(makes about four pints)

Ingredients

A dozen or so apples, about six pounds, peeled, cored, and chopped  (see Recipe Notes)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (freshly ground if you can)

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

hearty pinch of salt

Method

Place all ingredients in your slow cooker and stir to combine.

Let it cook on low for eight hours, or high for four to six. You sort of know when it’s done. Look for completely soft apples, like melted butter almost. If your slow cooker isn’t slow, keep an eye on it and watch for burning. If your apples are not very juicy, you can add a little apple cider (1/4 cup or so).

When the apples are cooked, use an immersion blender (if you have one) to blend until velvety smooth. If your apple butter is not a dark, luscious brown, it needs a little more time. You can let it cook on low for another hour or so.

If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender. Be mindful of lava scalding hot apple butter flying from the blender, though. That shit is deadly.

Recipe Notes

  • Because the neighborhood apples were not as flavorful as I would have liked, about half of my most recent recipe was supplemented by Braeburn apples, which are a good crunchy combination of tart and sweet. Straight up pie apples require more sugar to make a proper apple butter than I would like to use, so go for a mix of sweet and tart. For god’s sakes, don’t use Red or Yellow Delicious.
  • An apple peeler makes life so much easier. I use this one.
  • This recipe can be preserved with canning. The USDA would prefer that you use a pressure canner, but I have canned this by ladling hot apple butter into clean, sterilized pint jars and boiling in a water bath for 15 minutes.  If I don’t hear the pop of the lid, I eat it within two weeks, give it away, or freeze it. Some people add citric acid to deter bacteria, but I like to live on the edge.

Just Ten More Strokes – Truly Citrony Lemon Bars

 

lemon tart gluten-free
“See, Red? When life hands you lemons, you know what you gotta do?” “Wow,” Lauren said. “Yes, Mr. Cliché, I know what I have to do. I make lemonade.” “No,” he said. “You scream, ‘Fuck you, lemons!” “And then you throw those goddamn lemons into oncoming traffic, and you go do what you want to do.” ― Priscilla Glenn, Back to You

I cook when I am sad.

I cook when I am happy.

I cook to comfort people.

I have, at times, and much to my chagrin and embarrassment at my passive aggression, not cooked when someone made me angry.

I cook when I have no thoughts in my head.

I cook when there are so many thoughts in my head that my ears are ringing to the beat of my heart and my jaw is tense and I wake myself up in the night, grinding my teeth flat.

I cook when I don’t want to write and also when I do and also when I have things to write that I cannot put down on paper just in case I die and someone goes through my papers and it’s not something that anyone should be reading.

The only time I don’t cook is when I am can’t figure out who to cook for and making anything would waste food.

Except for the only other time that I don’t cook, which is when despair sets in.

Despair is a big word, like “disappointment.” I try to use my words carefully; I am critical in my head (and sometimes out of my mouth) when people toss words around in cavalier fashion. They matter, words do, even in this age of grunting and listicles and pictures.

So. Despair.

The dictionary defines it as “the complete loss or absence of hope.”

On all but my worst days, it’s possible for me to avoid this word. There is always something to reach for. Or even just to pin my mind to, just for a little while until the feeling passes.

My dad told me the story once of a guy who swam the English Channel. He (my dad) said the guy was interviewed, and one of the questions was, “How did you make it across?” Which is a really DUMB QUESTION, but many of my father’s stories and jokes featured dumb shit prominently.

The swimmer replied, “I just told myself to swim ten more strokes. And after I swam ten strokes, I thought, well, I can just swim ten more. So I swam across the Channel, ten strokes at a time.”

Frankly, this story is so neat and tidy and fits his long-forgotten point so well that I am pretty sure my dad made it up. Which was also part of his M.O.

But it works for many different aspects of my life.

On this day, I am trying to keep the English Channel in mind. There have been three deaths in and around my life in the past four weeks: two friends of my daughter’s and yesterday, my uncle. I don’t feel much like baking today, and despite the unutterably gorgeous weather of the past two days, I don’t feel much like going outside. But today I will force myself out of the bed. I will wash some laundry, and then some dogs, and maybe I will write for money and drag myself out for a little walk.

And I will definitely dig out my mother’s recipe for Truly Citrony Lemon Bars, which I will turn into a tart and bring to a friend who maybe might appreciate them. This uses plain, simple ingredients that you have lying around, which makes it easy because there is very little actual effort involved.

It’s the whole when life hands you lemons thing. Ten more strokes.

Truly Citrony Lemon Tart

Ingredients

1 stick butter, softened

1/4 cup powdered sugar (plus more for dusting)

1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular works here, too)

1 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup lemon juice (I used three lemons, but they were very juicy)

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 heaping tablespoons gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular works here, too)

Method

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream butter and sugar together, then add flour. Continue to beat until mixture clumps like dough.

Press dough on the bottom and slightly up the sides of a round tart pan (or 9×9″ glass baking dish).

Bake for 15 minutes.

While the crust is baking, mix together all remaining ingredients.

Pour filling over hot crust and bake again for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar to serve.

Life Doesn’t Stand Up To Thinking: Roasted Beet Dip With Feta And Aleppo Pepper Crackers

“Life doesn’t stand up to thinking. Smell the air out there; there are wonders.”

Are You Here with Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis is an unexpectedly serious movie that tricked me into thinking it would be a light-hearted bromance when really it was a meditation on the uselessness of life.

Welcome to blog, first-time readers. #KeepComingBack

Galifianakis’s character is a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic who inherits everything after his father’s death but is too crazy to know what to do with it. When a troubled Amish boy who hears voices from God tells Galifianakis that God wants him to take his medicine, Galifianakis does. He realizes, quickly, that life is filled with no purpose and is pointless. His stepmother consoles him:

“Life doesn’t stand up to thinking. Smell the air out there; there are wonders.”

And that’s just how things go, right? There is really no point. Anyone who says they have figured out life isn’t thinking too hard. Mostly they are going along with what everyone else is doing and are reasonably satisfied with their life and just sort of sink into the idea that their life is what The Purpose of Life is.

Except that’s kind of bullshit.

There is no purpose. There are diversions, to be sure, and good things to get into, just like there are tragedies and overwhelming sadness and horrible people in the world.

There is no point. Life doesn’t just stand up to thinking.

If you can get from birth to death without hurting people on purpose while also voting every two years (and in special elections) and loving some people real good and maybe making something beautiful once or twice, then that’s pretty much it.

But still, this gives you no license to waste it. When the biology of schizophrenia begins to clear, Galifianakis says of his approach to life, “I wasted so much. I gobbled it all down without tasting it.”

It’s hard to know what “wasting” your life means, really. If you choose to not pursue money or status too lustily and to instead count the grains of sand on a beach or write or paint or work temp jobs or travel your whole life, many in the U.S. would call that “wasting your life.”

Add to the list of life-wasting things (at least in the culture of the U.S.):

  • Not going to college
  • Not having children
  • Not paying into retirement
  • Not buying a house
  • Not having a “career”
  • Not donating money or volunteering regularly

I am sure you can add some of your own. Anything that doesn’t fit the mold is often considered by someone as a “wasted” life. But consider, as one always should, Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

~The Summer Day~’

Indeed. Everything dies at last, and too soon.

Everything, from the bees to the flowers to the humans, will wilt, wither, and die in the sunshine or the snow. We are all of us just passing through.

This is, to me, a horribly debilitating and incredibly liberating understanding, all at once. We only get the one life that we know of, so there’s a ton of pressure to NOT FUCK IT UP.

But what the hell does that mean? And truly, who is keeping score? Who is the person who gets to tell us we are fucking it all up?

So there’s this idea, the liberated side of the Pointlessness of Life: do what you like.

Seriously.

Of course, not to the exclusion of caring for the children you foolishly brought into the world or hurting other people or otherwise being a douche.

But otherwise, why the hell not? Why not do what you like? You can’t take anything with you – even the memory of you will fade.

Spoiler alert: NO ONE WILL REMEMBER YOU, EVENTUALLY. And really? That’s just fine. Whatever mark we think we make will be erased in the unrelenting pressure of geologic time.

Life doesn’t stand up to thinking or reason, so just get out into the world and see what there is to see. And actually spend some time paying attention. It’s not about ticking boxes off a bucket list. It’s more about being present wherever you happen to be, placing yourself in the way of beauty and discovering what it feels like to experience awe.

Give it a shot. What the hell. We are all on our way out anyway.

You will, of course, need snacks.

This summer I am committed to the idea of what Sicily refers to as a “French Nibbler.” (TM) I have no idea where this name came from but it’s hilarious so I am using it and since this blog is in no way monetized and I have just given her credit I think we are all okay.

French Nibblers consist of finger-foodish things for dinner, set out on an appropriately beautiful, bespoke, foraged wooden board with period-authentic utensils for spreads and such.

That’s the Instagram bullshit. I am thinking more along the lines of whatever comes in the CSA, some homemade crackers, a few dips, some cured meats for the carnivores, and a couple cheeses. Serve with canned wine from Old Westminster Winery and snack on dinner as the sun goes down. Nothing to clean up, really, and no need to turn on the stove. You could pack all of it up and take it on a picnic, too. Something simple that doesn’t really require a ton of thought and satisfies all different types of people.

As with life, don’t gobble this down without tasting it.

Roasted Beet Dip With Feta And Aleppo Pepper Crackers

This recipe is the first of a series of dips. Adding this luscious, earthy, subtle, and complex spread to any French Nibbler gets you a double-plus Life Bonus. #SpendYourPointsWisely

Beet Dip Ingredients

4 beets (about the size of baseballs)

Pickling liquid: 1 cup water, 2/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup vinegar

Peppercorns, a smattering (that’s a measurement)

4-6 sprigs thyme

2 whole cloves garlic, smashed to peel and left that way

1/2 cup toasted pecans

Cracked black pepper

4 ounces Feta cheese (plus more for serving)

2 tsp. champagne vinegar

Olive oil, good quality (Don’t. Skimp.)

Salt

Aleppo Pepper Crackers Ingredients

Everyday Crackers

ADD-INS: 1 tsp Aleppo pepper, 2 tsp sumac

Method

Okay, I lied. You do need to turn the oven on and use the stove, but just once. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place two beets (washed but unpeeled), two smashed garlic cloves, and one sprig of thyme in aluminum foil. Drizzle with olive oil. Loosely close foil and place on baking sheet. Roast in oven until a fork easily pierces the beets (about 60 minutes). Remove from oven and cool.

Toast pecans using the residual heat from the oven. Place pecans on a baking sheet and place in hot, turned off oven. Check periodically and remove when they taste delicious (this time will vary, but it’s not rocket science. If they taste good, they are done).

While beets are roasting, peel remaining two beets and cut into matchsticks.

For god’s sake, use gloves. #YouWereWarned

Pack beets, peppercorns, and one sprig of thyme into a Mason jar.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring pickling liquid ingredients to a boil. Pour over beets and let beets cool on the counter. Refrigerate.

Once roasted beets are cool, use a paper towel to rub the skin off the beet. Give up after a while and use a paring knife to peel the rest of the skin off. Cut into large chunks and place into a food processor. Add one (or both) cloves of roasted garlic, roasted pecans, 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme, 4 ounces of feta, and champagne vinegar. Process until smooth-ish. Add some best-quality olive oil to help it along. It need not be baby-food smooth.

Add salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste, and adjust to your taste. Beets are not all the same, so they may need more or less sweetness or acid, a pinch or two more or less salt.

Remember your quick-pickled beets? Grab a handful of those and chop them roughly. Stir into your beet dip and also serve on the side. Top with more feta and maybe some chopped pecans if you have any left.

Make a batch of Everyday Crackers, using the Aleppo pepper and sumac as add-ins, or just buy some damn crackers. It’s not a contest. You will be fine.

Recipe notes

  • Substitutions: yellow beets or carrots even would work here. Rough carrots may benefit from the addition of honey.
  • You will be able to taste the olive oil, so really, use the best you can find/afford/have in your cabinet.
  • Whip up a batch of Toasted Cashew Hummus and be done with it (and really, the hero to all of your friends or whoever is joining you for dinner).
  • Use your leftover pickled beets as part of the French Nibbler or drape over burgers with goat cheese or in salads with chickpeas.

Tell me: what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

 

Striding Into The World: Grilled Asparagus With Sweet Fire Pickle Gribiche

Flying the friendly skies. TL:DR – check out the recipe video all the way at the bottom of this post.

It is my thing, I suppose, that I find silver cutlery in Baltimore. I have found ridiculous amounts of silverware in this city, for no apparent reason. I have asked around, and it’s fairly uncommon to find dining utensils that aren’t plastic lying about, and yet here I am with a drawer full of spoons, forks, and knives, some monogrammed, some heavy and high quality, and some the type of utensils you bring when you brown bag your lunch and don’t really care if someone in the office steals your fork.

A day before we left Amsterdam to return to the States, I realized that I had not found a fork or spoon or knife while visiting and started keeping my eyes out. Mind, in Baltimore, I don’t really have to look. They just appear. But I thought it might be swell to have a Dutch fork or some such.

No such luck. The closest I got was a neon green plastic spork resting, forlorn, in the middle of the bike lane.

But on my first trip out of the house on Sunday back home in Baltimore, on a jet-lagged walk up the street for late lunch, I looked down and found a fork.

If I were the sort of person who believed in signs (spoiler alert: I am, at least a little bit), I would be wondering what the hell it means that I have only in my entire life found silverware in Baltimore, and lots of it.

That the cutlery comes without me even looking.

That no one else I know has found silverware on the street.

That when I am thinking unrelated thoughts, like whether or not I should start cooking for people or if maybe I should move to Amsterdam, a fork or spoon pops up in my path in my city.

Or maybe it’s just how I walk through the world. In Baltimore, for better or for worse, I keep my head down or fixed on a point a few feet in front of me. It makes sense that my gaze would sweep up whatever is in my path.

In Amsterdam, I rarely looked down. Not only was the city itself beautiful when you look around (unlike Baltimore, if I am being honest, which I always try to be) but it was also challenging to not get run over by a bicycle.  There is no room for a downcast gaze.

But it’s more than that, I think, this notion of how a body walks through the world. My particular friend and I have had recent conflict about taking up space. He feels, rightly so, that there are many, many pushy assholes (my words but his meaning) walking about, and he does not want to be numbered among their ranks. He feels especially keenly the white maleness of himself and would rather disappear or defer than add to the pain and suffering that those of his ilk (white males) have inflicted upon pretty much everyone in the world.

I hear this. It’s one of the reasons I love him.

But then there is this: everyone has a right to space in this world. There is a way to claim your own space without infringing on the rights and space of others. Hiding our light under a bushel makes the world just a little bit darker. Not claiming our own space doesn’t make it any easier for others to claim their own. Indeed, if we can just step into the light of our own selves it somehow makes it easier to help others find their own. How? I don’t know. By example? By knowing what it feels like to feel fully your own self, without making excuses and feeling completely worthy of whatever comes your way and thus showing by your very existence the limitless possibility of this one life that we can remember?

Something along those lines.

Maybe finding cutlery on the street has nothing to do with that, though. Maybe I look down in Baltimore because this is where I am grounded; knowing that ample forks, knives, and spoons are waiting in the street maybe makes it easier for me to look up and around in the rest of the world. Maybe these eating utensils represent the basic needs that this city meets for me: food and shelter, a home base.

In a way, this is a comfort and a burden. Baltimore is a heavy weight. I love so much about this city while at the same time really hating so much as well. It’s dirty and oppressive to people of color and women. It is hospitable to artists as long as they know their place, and just two miles from where I live the life expectancy is a full 12 years less. The distance between the haves and the don’t-even-dream-of-havings gets even greater weekly as housing becomes unaffordable and the city’s schools and infrastructure begin to crumble. Many describe the city as “gritty” or “scrappy,” but it is, at times, painfully desperate.

This city is also the Orioles and Old Bay and Edgar Allen Poe and 1919 and my good friend Luke and my oldest friend Kerry. It’s a place where a thousand non-profits are working every day to make life better. It’s where Sicily and I came when Marietta and the memory of Dane was so painful that we needed comfort and friends and a break somewhere that was not demanding.

Really, though, how do we claim space on this planet? It seems our footprints are larger than our shadows, but even as much as I try to convince my particular friend to stride out into the world it’s a daily struggle for me to feel like anything more than an insignificant speck (which truly, that’s all we really are – dust, less than a blip in geologic time). Maybe the forks and the spoons and the knives are just the way I try to make meaning, much the same as anyone who does anything with any regularity. Maybe your 40-hour-a-week career is my street-flattened spoon.

Regardless of the manner in which we step into ourselves (and the world) fully, the one thing that I would like to import back to Baltimore from our recent trip to Amsterdam is the multi-course meal. In the U.S., we tend to equate multiple courses with special occasions and required suit jackets, but it seems in Europe that is just how meals go (my child spent a year in France and can verify that even weekday breakfast has courses). When we met Khristian’s friends Carla and Axel for dinner, they served us three courses:

  1. Grilled vegetables with burrata, tomatoes, and sardines
  2. Seared salmon
  3. Penne with grilled beef

All accompanied by wines to match and finished with a rich chocolate brownie.

Even though this seems extravagant for an everyday meal, the preparations were all very simple and delicious. We reclined over dinner, drinks, and good conversation for several hours. Perhaps this was something of an occasion, as Khristian had not seen these friends since 2004, but meals were like this wherever we went: long and multi-coursed.

In this spirit, and to humor those of you who are really craving spring, I offer this as an easy first course to add to a plain old weekday meal: Grilled Asparagus With Sweet Fire Pickle Gribiche.

Gribiche is traditionally a creamy French dressing/sauce made in the same manner as mayonnaise except with cooked egg yolks instead of raw. It keeps popping up for spring vegetables because it’s a delicious way to dress anything that comes out of the oven or off the grill. I think it’s probably one of the few things that can improve the already-perfect asparagus. I have made it here with sweet fire pickles; you can substitute a more traditional cornichon is that’s your jam. Other herbs traditionally used here can include chervil and tarragon. I have kept it simple with just flat-leaf parsley.

You don’t even need to use a fork for this; it’s perfectly acceptable even in polite company to pick up asparagus with your fingers. If you need one, though, I have several.

Grilled Asparagus With Sweet Fire Pickle Gribiche 

(serves 4)

Ingredients

2 – 4 tablespoons chopped Sweet Fire pickles (see Recipe Notes)
⅓ cup grapeseed oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon chopped drained capers
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1 pound asparagus (preferably grilled, but roasted works, too)

Method

It could not be easier to make gribiche: combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir well. The end. Spoon over grilled asparagus (or anything else, really).

To make eating easier, you can cut your grilled asparagus into 1″ bites and mix the gribiche in, but you will need a fork.

Recipe Notes

  • Sweet Fire pickles come from Georgia, as far as I am concerned. They are cucumbers pickled with sugar and jalapeños and they are pretty much the best thing ever. I got my last jar at Huck’s General Store in Blue Ridge, GA, but they seem to be online as well.
  • Traditionally this recipe uses cornichons, which are not at all sweet. I like the balance of sweet, sour, and spicy in this, but you could use cornichons instead. If you don’t have those, chop up some dill pickles and you’re all set.
  • Gribiche keeps in the ‘fridge for a couple days. Bring to room temp before serving. Good on roasted veg, chicken, duck, and meaty fish.

A Recipe Video – Just For You

Making Dinner: Enchilada Version

The beautiful, beautiful groundwork.

I teach my first yin yoga class at Yoga Tree in Hampden tonight (at 8:15; come join me), and tonight the theme is time. In her book To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf writes the following:

“Let the wind blow. Let the poppy seed itself and the carnation mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build in the drawing room and the thistle thrust aside the tiles and the butterfly sun itself on the faded chintz of the armchairs. Let the broken glass and the china lie out on the lawn and be tangled over with grass and wild berries.”

No matter where we come from, what race we are, how much money we have, or what our political beliefs are, there is a singular universal truth that unites us: time passes.

As The Child nears the end of her high school experience, I am realizing more the precious and fleeting nature of time. It is hard to move through the world without letting things pass you by; we are so busy assigning stories to what happens to us and thinking about what happened before and what might happen next that we forget the thing that is happening now. Now. Now. Now.

Each second as it passes is gone forever, a kind of tick of history, tangled over with grass and wild berries.

The chance of us missing everything, good and bad, rises exponentially in proportion to our inability to quiet the mind, slow down, and just be where we are when we are there.

Spoiler alert: You are here, so you might as well be present.

The practice of existing in the moment that is happening occurs most often for me on the yoga mat, but it also happens out in nature and in my kitchen. In the kitchen, the difference between Missing It and Being There is most pronounced in the distinction between two seemingly similar concepts: I love to cook, but I hate making dinner.

There is a HUGE difference; making dinner is about getting something done to move quickly onto the next. Cooking, for me, is about creating and exploring and experiencing and being exactly where I am in each moment.

When I make enchiladas for dinner, I open up a can of refried beans, open up a can of artificially red enchilada sauce, open up a bag of pre-shredded cheese, and open up a bag of dry tortillas. The whole thing takes about 30 minutes, from opening cans to sitting down to eat, and it costs less than five bucks to feed four people. They taste good, they are fast, and they get the job done, efficiently and cheaply.

But I finally got sick of doing it that way. Even though I know I can always come back to this when my family is flapping their gaping maws at me, clamoring for dinner and starting to root through the cabinets for the chips and cookies that will fill them up and ultimately leave them “not hungry” when food hits the table, I wanted to see what I could do when I felt like cooking.

This is what I can do, and the difference is astonishing. Homemade beans, homemade enchilada sauce, and homemade corn tortillas. I stopped short of homemade cheese, although I have done that and don’t doubt that would be a delicious (and fairly easy addition). It’s hard to know which part about this I like more; I don’t love beans (and they are no fan of me), but I didn’t have the usual…reaction to this dish. And the enchilada sauce is complex and subtle and comes at you with layers of flavor and just a little tiny bit of spice.

There is something about making this simple, humble dish that takes literally most of the day to prepare that forces you to slow down. Even the flavors reveal themselves slowly, unfurling over the tongue like a flag.

When you feel like cooking, skip the cans and make these. The recipe makes enough sauce and beans for two 8″ x 8″ baking dishes, so make one and eat it, and make one and freeze it. I made homemade tortillas, too, but the recipe I used is proprietary to the person I got it from and I am not at liberty to share it in public. It’s hard to go wrong with a Rick Bayless corn tortilla recipe, but you can also just buy some if you like. You don’t need a tortilla, press, though, and there is definitely something meditative about making tortillas. Why not give it a try?

Bean and Cheese Enchiladas

Start with the beans. They take four hours to cook, so you have plenty of time to make the sauce while they are becoming their beany delicious selves. Better yet, make sauce and beans one day, let them rest, then cook the tortillas and assemble on the day you want to eat.

Ingredients

Refried beans

2 cups pinto beans

Olive oil (for frying, about two tablespoons)

One large onion, large diced

5 – 10 cloves of garlic (I used on the 10-clove side of things)

1 teaspoon onion powder

Salt to taste

Enchilada sauce

4 dried ancho chilis

4 dried guajillo chilis

4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled

10 cherry tomatoes, or two medium-sized plum tomatoes, roughly chopped

One medium onion, roughly chopped

1-2 cups chicken or vegetable stock, warmed

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon marjoram

Olive oil

1 tablespoon maple syrup (or honey or agave)

Method

Make the beans: Rinse and pick through the pinto beans, discarding rocks or discolored beans. Cover with water in a large pot and bring to a hard boil. Boil for 20 minutes, then drain, add more water, bring to a boil, and boil for another 20 minutes (this helps reduce the chances of gastrointestinal issues, IYKWIM). Reduce the heat and cover. Cook beans for four hours.

As you near the end of the bean cooking time, heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to caramelize (about 15 minutes). Add whole garlic cloves and continue to cook, stirring, until onions are deeply brown, very soft, and garlic is also soft.

Drain beans (reserve a cup of bean liquid) and add to onions and garlic. Sprinkle beans with onion powder and salt and cook, stirring, for about 15 minutes. Use a potatoes masher to mash the beans, onion, and garlic into a texture you like. If the beans seem dry, add bean liquid and continue to cook. Taste, season with salt as necessary, then set aside. These can be refrigerated overnight or frozen for later use.

Make the enchilada sauce:  Toast the dried chilies and garlic in a dry cast iron pan or on a flattop grill. You are looking for them to soften, puff up, and begin to char (not too much or your sauce will be bitter; see Recipe Notes).

Place toasted ancho and guajillo peppers in a bowl and cover with hot water. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for at least an hour (or two or three).

Once your garlic skin begins to char and soften, peel the skin and let garlic cool.

Place garlic, tomatoes, and chopped onion in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Cover with stock and bring to a boil. Cook at low heat until tomatoes, onions, and garlic soften.

Retrieve your chilis from their now-dark soaking chili water and remove the stems. Place chilis in a blender and use a slotted spoon to add the garlic/tomato/onion from the stock. Add cumin and marjoram. Allow these to rest and cool briefly while you reduce the stock with the chili soaking water.

Add chili water to the stock in the saucepan and heat. Bring to a rolling boil and reduce heat. Cook at a low boil until the sauce is slightly reduced. This step is not necessary but will concentrate the flavors even more.

Add some of this reduction to the vegetables in the blender and blend. Continue to blend and add chili water until you get the consistency you would like, and then blend until smooth. You may not use all of the chili water/stock.

Final, and most important step: Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan, and carefully pour the blended enchilada sauce into the pan. This will splatter, so have a splatter guard (or some aloe) ready. Cook the sauce at a pretty good boil for about five minutes. You can add chili water/stock as needed to maintain the consistency you like. Remove from heat and stir in maple syrup.

Let come to room temperature before using. I like to cool it overnight to allow the flavors to really come together.

Assembly: Place a solid heaping tablespoon of refried beans onto a tortilla, then roll and place in a greased 8″x8″ glass baking dish (or a rectangular one if you like). Really wedge those babies in, and continue until you have used all your tortillas or are satisfied that you have enough to feed your people. Pour about a cup and a half of enchilada sauce (or more if you like them juicy – I do) evenly over the tortillas, and top with shredded cheese of your choice (totally inauthentic, but I am a Colby-jack fan. Sue me. It’s delicious.).

Cover with aluminum foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake until cheese is brown and bubbly. Serve with sour cream and extra hot sauce if you like.

Recipe Notes

  • Enchilada sauce can turn out bitter for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is over-toasting the chilis. If this happens to you, you can remedy it by adding a bit more sweetener or even adding 1 teaspoon of baking soda. I recommend adding sweetness, not baking soda.
  • To freeze a pan of enchiladas, assemble all the way up to baking, then wrap tightly. When you are ready to cook them, defrost and then cook as usual.